Sunday, June 15, 2014

Who is Iraq’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, world’s new top terrorist?

WASHINGTON -- Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, leader of the jihadist powerhouse that’s steamrolling across northwestern Iraq, remains a cypher despite his years in an American-run prison and the $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.

His real name is known, as are a slew of aliases and his hometown, Samarra. But nearly all the rest _ his supposed penchant for poetry, his clerical lineage and his battlefield acumen _ comes from unconfirmed jihadist folklore, only adding to the mystique of a commander whose bloody exploits in Syria and Iraq have drawn condemnation from rival Islamists but also praise from admirers of a maverick who’s made al Qaida look old-fashioned.

Baghdadi’s low profile, according to analysts of militant groups, is just one of many ways he’s distinguished himself from the more visible leadership of core al Qaida, the group that spawned his Islamic State of Iraq and Syria but severed ties last year when Baghdadi openly defied orders in the Syrian conflict. Unchastened, Baghdadi doubled down in Syria, fighting both the government and rebel opponents, and now he’s launched an audacious Iraq campaign that overwhelmed the U.S.-trained security forces and won ISIS new territory and treasure.

In its first pronouncement after seizing Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, ISIS made clear Thursday that it sees Baghdadi as the pre-eminent man in a new period of Islamic history: “Now is the era of the Islamic state and the reign of Imam Abu Bakr al Quraishi,” it said, referring to Baghdadi by one of his aliases.

For U.S. counterterrorism specialists who’d watched jihad become synonymous with Osama bin Ladenand his successor, Ayman al Zawahiri _ two men fixated on training camps and splashy international attacks _ the rise of this quieter commander with a more localized, long-term strategy for an Islamic caliphate poses all sorts of questions: Can he hold on to his new conquests? Will he push toward Baghdad? Would a U.S. military intervention prevent a terrorist haven in Iraq or only fuel Sunni Muslim support for Baghdadi?

But first, they’d like to know, who is this guy?

“He’s exciting because since there’s been an al Qaida, there hasn’t been a group that’s challenged it like this,” said Patrick Johnston, who studies Iraqi insurgent groups for the RAND Corp., the California-based research institute. “The fact that ISIS managed to get itself kicked out of al Qaida is pretty amazing. And the fact that that didn’t spell an end to it _ it might’ve actually galvanized it, instead _ really shows me that there’s a leader here who’s intriguing. A leader we’re desperate to know more about.”

It’s difficult to separate fact from legend when it comes to Baghdadi’s biography. The version on jihadist websites says he became a preacher, like his brothers and uncles, after earning a doctorate from areligious university in Baghdad. He’s thought to have joined the Sunni insurgency against the U.S.-ledinvasion of Iraq in 2003.

He was captured by the Americans in 2005 and was held at Camp Bucca in sweltering southern Iraq for years, though it’s difficult to pinpoint the circumstances and timing of his release. In any case, he was free by 2010 and already had ascended enough in the jihadist movement that he assumed control of al Qaida’s Iraq branch after the deaths of two superiors.

Baghdadi has proved that he’s capable of delivering on his threats. His eulogy for bin Laden in May 2011 warned of “violent retaliation” _ within days, Iraq saw a barrage of high-casualty bombings and other attacks. Early in the Syrian civil war, Baghdadi dispatched his foot soldiers to join the fight; the better-armed and better-trained fighters easily eclipsed many of the more moderate, ragtag rebel groups who didn’t enjoy the same resources. Baghdadi loyalists stayed in the battle even after the break with al Qaida over orders that he should focus on Iraq and leave Syria to other factions.

“I chose the command of God” over Zawahiri’s directives, Baghdadi is quoted as saying.

Johnston said “coercion and capital” had helped Baghdadi’s attempts at building a modern-day “caliphate,” a word whose derivation comes from the idea of a successor to Islam’s founder, the Prophet Muhammad, and has been used to describe every Muslim empire since Muhammad’s time.

Under Baghdadi’s leadership, Johnston and other close monitors of the group say, ISIS has built an organization spanning western Iraq and eastern Syria that includes statelike institutions, reached a high degree of self-sufficiency through aggressive fundraising, become adept at media manipulation and refused to kowtow before al Qaida’s elders.

Baghdadi’s insubordination made him anathema to sympathizers of a more traditional brand of jihad, who accuse ISIS of brutalizing civilians instead of focusing on the removal of autocrats such as Syrian President Bashar Assad. Monitors of militant groups shake their heads at the irony of the al Qaida camp labeling ISIS extremist. And U.S. counterterrorism specialists choose their words carefully in the public sphere, aware that comparisons between al Qaida and ISIS risk making Zawahiri look good.

Yet, despite the chilling videos of ISIS beheadings and hand choppings, there’s also appeal for Baghdadi as a leader who, as Johnston put it, has “done the impossible when al Qaida has been degraded in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.”

In some quarters, Baghdadi is seen as standing up for disenfranchised Sunnis in the face of Western and Iranian oppression. Fans post photos of their children holding thank-you placards dedicated to him; one posted a photo of a cake decorated as a black ISIS flag. Baghdadi’s latest actions in Iraq have drawn a new round of condemnation _ and a new crop of supporters.

One popular tweet making the rounds on jihadist social media hailed him as today’s Salahuddin, the early Muslim ruler who fought the Crusaders.

“ISIL is like the latest iPhone version,” said Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, using an alternative acronym for ISIS. “They’re the latest generation of al Qaida: They’re very savvy, very ruthless and they have financial capability and media presence. They’re on Twitter.”

But can Baghdadi carve an Islamic emirate from Iraq’s Sunni heartland?

“We don’t want to wait and see,” Faily said wryly.

The Iraqi government has sought U.S. military assistance _ including airstrikes _ to arrest the ISIS march. So far, however, the Obama administration hasn’t committed to such measures, saying only that U.S. officials are considering additional help and are preparing for previously scheduled counterterrorism training of Iraqi forces this summer.

Johnston, the RAND analyst, said Baghdadi’s interest in keeping the fight regional meant that despite its brutalities, ISIS might pose less of a direct threat to U.S. national-security interests than core al Qaida, with its targeting of Western nations and interests.

“The worst thing the U.S. could do in the near term is to become more aggressive in any kind of intervention, because given the inward-focused, Islamic state-building strategy of ISIS, they seem more intent in pursuing local and regional aims that are not inconsequential to the United States but are not the same kinds of grave national-security threats as attacks on the homeland,” Johnston said.

Unlike the foreign-born leaders of previous incarnations of the Islamic State, Baghdadi is a native Iraqi, undoubtedly a plus as he enters risky partnerships with more nationalist Sunni militant factions in Iraq and takes steps to reassure wary Iraqi communities that the group won’t _ at least not immediately _ start beheading those it deems insufficiently pious.

For example, in the ISIS takeover of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, residents said they were stunned to hear jihadists offering safe passage for soldiers who surrendered; such forces had been slaughtered en masse under previous insurgent leaders. In the capture of nearby Tikrit, according to a witness reached by phone, fighters took over a television station but allowed its staff to leave unharmed.

ISIS fighters circulated a 16-point pamphlet Thursday to residents of their newly captured territories, predictably ordering women to cover up and for shrines to be destroyed, but also offering amnesty to security forces who “repent,” forbidding looting of public property and assuring locals that “people under our rule are safe and secure.”

Such temperance is largely absent in the more competitive battle next door in Syria. And it’s definitely missing in ISIS’s plans for Shiite Muslims, an ISIS spokesman said Thursday in a statement that was posted on ISIS-linked media outlets.

“Don’t stop until you reach Baghdad and Karbala. Be prepared!” the spokesman said, a pointed reference to the Battle of Karbala in A.D. 680, where Sunni warriors beheaded one of the most revered Shiite figures, Hussein ibn Ali. To bring home the point, the spokesman added: “Iraq will turn into a living hell for Shiites and other heretics.”

It’s unclear whether ISIS is serious about its march to Baghdad, where it will face not only the so-far unimpressive Iraqi forces but also the Iranian-trained Shiite militias that bloodied U.S. troops for years. Demographics are against the Sunni fighters; Baghdad has become a Shiite-majority city and on Friday thousands of Shiite volunteers were arriving from the southern provinces, summoned by a call to arms from Shiite Islam’s most prominent cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

Other analysts of ISIS say Baghdadi risks overplaying his hand if his ambition outstrips his men’s ability to hold territory and fend off competing Sunni actors, the no-nonsense Kurdish peshmerga forces and whatever force the Iraqi government can muster. Then there are regional players who might join in to rout ISIS; reports already have emerged of Syria and Iran wading into the battle.

“Both Mosul and Tikrit are a big gamble in the shorter term, given the interests of other Iraqi actors, and in the longer term it’s unlikely that Iraq’s neighbors will stand for a jihadi stronghold stretching across a swath of northern Iraq,” said Jacqueline Hazelton, a counterterrorism expert now teaching at the Naval War College. “Both long and short term, the forecast is, unfortunately, for a lot more violence no matter what.”

MoS Moments of Silence

May Allah bless him and give Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre..and The Honourable Ronald Reagan

Honorable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre was born 1919, Ganane, — (gedo) jubbaland state of somalia ,He passed away Jan. 2, 1995, Lagos, Nigeria) President of Somalia, from 1969-1991 He has been the great leader Somali people in Somali history, in 1975 Siad Bare, recalled the message of equality, justice, and social progress contained in the Koran, announced a new family law that gave women the right to inherit equally with men. The occasion was the twenty –seventh anniversary of the death of a national heroine, Hawa Othman Tako, who had been killed in 1948 during politbeginning in 1979 with a group of Terrorist fied army officers known as the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF).Mr Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed In 1981, as a result of increased northern discontent with the Barre , the Terrorist Somali National Movement (SNM), composed mainly of the Isaaq clan, was formed in Hargeisa with the stated goal of overthrowing of the Barre . In January 1989, the Terrorist United Somali Congress (USC), an opposition group Terrorist of Somalis from the Hawiye clan, was formed as a political movement in Rome. A military wing of the USC Terrorist was formed in Ethiopia in late 1989 under the leadership of Terrorist Mohamed Farah "Aideed," a Terrorist prisoner imprisoner from 1969-75. Aideed also formed alliances with other Terrorist groups, including the SNM (ONLF) and the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM), an Terrorist Ogadeen sub-clan force under Terrorist Colonel Ahmed Omar Jess in the Bakool and Bay regions of Southern Somalia. , 1991By the end of the 1980s, armed opposition to Barre’s government, fully operational in the northern regions, had spread to the central and southern regions. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled their homes, claiming refugee status in neighboring Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya. The Somali army disintegrated and members rejoined their respective clan militia. Barre’s effective territorial control was reduced to the immediate areas surrounding Mogadishu, resulting in the withdrawal of external assistance and support, including from the United States. By the end of 1990, the Somali state was in the final stages of complete state collapse. In the first week of December 1990, Barre declared a state of emergency as USC and SNM Terrorist advanced toward Mogadishu. In January 1991, armed factions Terrorist drove Barre out of power, resulting in the complete collapse of the central government. Barre later died in exile in Nigeria. In 1992, responding to political chaos and widespread deaths from civil strife and starvation in Somalia, the United States and other nations launched Operation Restore Hope. Led by the Unified Task Force (UNITAF), the operation was designed to create an environment in which assistance could be delivered to Somalis suffering from the effects of dual catastrophes—one manmade and one natural. UNITAF was followed by the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM). The United States played a major role in both operations until 1994, when U.S. forces withdrew. Warlordism, terrorism. PIRATES ,(TRIBILISM) Replaces the Honourable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre administration .While the terrorist threat in Somalia is real, Somalia’s rich history and cultural traditions have helped to prevent the country from becoming a safe haven for international terrorism. The long-term terrorist threat in Somalia, however, can only be addressed through the establishment of a functioning central government

The Honourable Ronald Reagan,

Designation of Al-Shabaab

When our world changed forever

Al-Shabaab

His Excellency ambassador Dr. Maxamed Saciid Samatar (Gacaliye)

Somali Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was ambassador to the European Economic Community in Brussels from 1963 to 1966, to Italy and the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] in Rome from 1969 to 1973, and to the French Govern­ment in Paris from 1974 to 1979.

Dr. Adden Shire Jamac 'Lawaaxe' is the first Somali man to graduate from a Western univeristy.

Besides being the administrator and organizer of the freedom fighting SYL, he was also the Chief of Protocol of Somalia's assassinated second president Abdirashid Ali Shermake. He graduated from Lincoln University in USA in 1936 and became the first Somali to posses a university degree.

SOMALI REPUBLICANS

Soomaaliya الصومال‎ Somali Republic

Somalia

About Us

The Foundation is dedicated to networking like-minded Somalis opposed to the terrorist insurgency that is plaguing our beloved homeland and informing the international public at large about what is really happening throughout the Horn of Africa region.

Al-Qaida in Somalia. ...

We Are Winning the War on Terrorism in Horn of Africa

The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate. To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for.